When General Director David Gockley went public recently with his concerns about the San Francisco Opera's shaky financial footing, it wasn't clear to all observers that he was talking about something serious. For most of us, any dollar figure that includes the word "million" can translate intuitively into "plenty of money."

But a look around the American classical music landscape offers sad and alarming evidence of how easily things can go south. As we speak, two of the nation's most important musical organizations are struggling with difficulties that could be crippling or even life-threatening.

The Philadelphia Orchestra, in the face of serious budget deficits and declining attendance, decided in April to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy - the first major American orchestra, by all accounts, to take such a drastic step. Weeks later, the orchestra management followed up with the decision to cut subscription concerts by 15 percent, cancel touring and tart up its musical offerings with light classics and film scores.

Deeper trouble

In New York, meanwhile, the New York City Opera is in even deeper trouble as it plunges into what looks increasingly like a death spiral in the face of a multimillion-dollar budget shortfall.

Last month, the company announced plans to leave its longtime home at Lincoln Center and offer a curtailed season at other locations in New York. What those locations might be - not to mention which operas and artists are likely to figure in the schedule - is currently a well-kept secret, even from the company's subscribers.

How did these venerable, well-established institutions come to such a sorry pass? The same way Lehman Bros. and Bear Stearns did: through poor - and specifically shortsighted - leadership. And just like on Wall Street, the people making these decisions aren't really the ones whose livelihoods are on the line.

Repercussions felt

If City Opera were to go under, the repercussions would be felt most keenly by the musicians, stagehands, technical crew and office workers drawing a paycheck - not to mention those frugal operagoers who rely on "the people's opera" as an affordable alternative to the much pricier Metropolitan Opera. And the decline in the Philadelphia Orchestra's fortunes promises to have a larger impact on its employees and patrons than on those actually steering the ship.

That's why it's so disheartening to see the extent to which the predicaments of both organizations are devolving into fights between the leadership and the rank-and-file. In New York, the American Guild of Musical Artists, which represents the singers, dancers and directors (as it does in San Francisco), has gone to court to try to prevent the company's relocation.

The situation in Philadelphia is even worse. Local reporting suggests that one of the motivating forces behind the orchestra's bankruptcy filing was a concern over the costs of funding the musicians' pensions - and that in turn has led to the plausible suspicion that the filing is simply an ill-judged tactical move in a labor negotiation.

Blaming unions

It's easy - and in the current political climate, all too common - to blame the unions for ostensible intransigence. "Let's see how they like it when the company goes under," goes this response. "Guess that reduced pension will look better then, huh?"

And it's just as easy to make vague protestations about prevailing financial conditions and the shifting patterns of culture consumption. Those observations are accurate as far as they go - money really is tight nowadays, and the role of orchestras and opera companies in American life really is changing - but they don't account for all the arts organizations that are doing OK.

No, the truth is that just like in the corporate and financial world, these failures began at the top, and go back a long way.

The history of weak management in Philadelphia is decades old, and includes mishandled decisions about recording contracts, embarrassing struggles to settle on a music director and the construction of a concert hall, Verizon Hall at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, that is widely regarded as overpriced and acoustically poor.

The City Opera's list of recent travails includes the abortive 2008 appointment of Gérard Mortier as general director; the Belgian impresario hadn't even taken the reins before resigning amid disputes about promised budgets. Meanwhile, according to published reports, the company's endowment has eroded from a high of $55 million to a mere $9 million, which gives new meaning to the idea of eating your seed corn.

Cautionary tales

There's no reason to imagine that anything comparable is in the cards for San Francisco's future - both of these crises, after all, could have been seen coming from quite a ways off had anyone cared to look. But they are cautionary tales nevertheless, a reminder that no arts organization is guaranteed survival or success. {sbox}